Television

Sunday, March 10, 2019

Don't look for SCOTUS on TV anytime soon

Despite public support for televising Supreme Court
hearings, the ban will remain for the foreseeable future and the issue isn’t
much of a topic of conversation among the justices, two of them told a House
appropriations subcommittee, reported the Washington Post.

Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Elena Kagan both said they
thought before joining the court that hearings should be televised. But Alito
said it was the collective agreement of the court that attorney grandstanding
would be “irresistible” and undermine “our paramount function, which is to
decide cases in the best possible way.”

He said he knew that view was not popular.

“I recognize most people think that our arguments should be
televised,” he said. “Most of the members of my family think the arguments
should be televised.”

The question of
whether the justices should televise hearings of their oral arguments is a
perennial issue, and subcommittee chairman Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) gently
pursued it.

“Most Americans have no idea how Supreme Court proceedings
even work,” Quigley said, adding it was impossible for most to attend oral
arguments, even though they are open to the public. But he acknowledged there
was little Congress could do to force the issue on an equal branch of
government.

“Clearly, it’s your decision,” he said.

While the issue animates others, it does not appear to
consume the court. Kagan said the justices as a group have not discussed it
since she joined the court in 2010.

Kagan said that when she observed the court as President
Barack Obama’s solicitor general she thought it would be good for the public to
see what she saw.

“It was thoughtful and it was probing and it was obvious
that the justices really wanted to get things right,” Kagan said. “And it’s no
small benefit if the American public were able to see that.”

But she now believes justices might “filter” themselves if
they worried that playing devil’s advocate during arguments might be
interpreted in a video clip as being biased.

If seeing the court at work “came at the expense of the way
the institution functioned, that would be a very bad bargain,” she said.

Cameras are ubiquitous in state supreme courts, and many
federal appeals courts allow them. Those who support more transparency say none
of the problems the justices imagine have come to pass.

“It’s a bit disingenuous for Justices Alito and Kagan to
state calmly, in front of several video cameras and a dais full of attorneys,
that cameras in their courtroom would somehow impact the tone of their
hearings, especially since concerns over grandstanding haven’t proven true in
other appeals courts that do allow video,” said Gabe Roth of Fix the Court, one
of the groups that favor cameras.

Instead, he said, showing the court at work “would do
wonders to correct the American people’s often biased perception of our
nation’s top court.”

About Matt

An analysis of crime and punishment from the perspective of a former prosecutor and current criminal justice practitioner.
The views expressed on this blog are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinions or postions of any county, state or federal agency.